Simultaneous determination of alkylphenols and bisphenol A in river water by stir bar sorptive extraction with in situ acetylation and thermal desorption–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

A method for the determination of seven alkylphenols and bisphenol A by stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) with in situ derivatization-thermal desorption (TD)–gas chromatography (GC)–mass spectrometry (MS) is described. SBSE was performed with in situ acetylation and without derivatization for comparison. For 4-tert-butylphenol and bisphenol A, in situ acetylation improved the responses in SBSE–TD–GC–MS. The method detection limits ranged from 0.1 to 3.2 ng/l. The recoveries of the analytes from a river water sample spiked with standards at 10 and 100 ng/l were 85.3–105.9% (R.S.D., 3.0–11.0%) and 88.3–105.8% (R.S.D., 1.6–8.3%), respectively.